PKESIDENTIAL ADDRKSS. 



245 



Txoelve Weeks After the Armistice- 



The following Papers were then read : 



1. The 'National Alliance of Employers and Employed. 

 By the Eight Hon. F. Huth Jackson. 



In the autumn of 1916 a group of three employers and four trade unionists 

 met to discuss the probable effect which war conditions would have on our 

 industrial system. These seven men, realising the gravity of the problems 

 which already were confronting the country, and visualising the still greater 

 pioblems which the future had in store, took what was then the somewhat adven- 

 turous step of initiating a movement whose whole foundation was ujiity of 

 effort on the part of employers and trade unions on a basis of franluiess, com- 

 radeship, and good-will. 



To that small and unpretentious gathering is to be traced, not only the 

 National Alliance of Employers and Employed, which was the immediate result, 

 ■but the whole of the great movement towards co-operative effort which now 

 promises to remould our industrial life and which recently led to the calling 

 by the Govenmient of the National Industrial Conference, and the setting up 

 of the National Joint Industrial Council. 



From the commencement we have realised that in industrial development 

 there could be no middle course. The old enemies, Capital and Labour, had 

 either to plunge into more bitter and more widespread strife or to discover 

 a common ground on which they could get together and for themselves work 

 out the lines of harmonious progress. In the face of innumerable difficulties, 

 and in spite of misunderstandings and misrepresentations, the National Alliance 

 has discovered that common ground, and to-day, in thirty of the most important 

 industrial districts in the country, Joint Area Committees (on which, as on 

 the central body, employers and trade unionists are represented in equal num- 

 bers) are working in harmony and understanding, not only for the peaceful 

 1919. X 



